noise

I admire Sub Pop Records. I really do mean this, sincerely even. Every year they release a record or two by a new noisy band in the spirit of Nirvana and I inevitably buy those because I've never outgrown grungy punk rock records. Most of these bands are fade shortly after their release. Some, like Toronto punks, Metz, and California noisemaers, No Age, have shown real staying power. Now, while I can't predict the future, hell, I can barely predict which rock records people will rock these days, I want to think the career trajectory of So Pitted will be closer to that of No Age and Metz, as opposed to His Electro Blue Voice, for example. Just listen to these ragers! Read More

All this noise for what? Oh, Destruction Unit live up to their name on Negative Feedback Resistor. Their sound is that of a tornado ripping apart a trailer park -- the kitchen sink rattling its contents of crusted pots and pans, vinyl siding smashing against once immovable oaks, cars piled upon cars. No one does destruction with guitar better than these dudes. Everything they touch rips with the ferocity of west coast hardcore and east coast noise addicts. Read More

In one sense, yes, Illegals in Heaven is Blank Realm's pop record, for gradually over the course of their career, the Brisbane art-punks have moved from outsider noise rock aiming to please the curators of all things obscure to easily identifiable song structures with shorter run times and predictable melodies. Yet, while continually making strides towards accessibility, the band still enjoy playfully fucking with everything they record by placing track upon track of melody, counter melody and white noise upon those simple songs. Read More

Brisbane, Australia's Blank Realm have always had a gift for classically-styled new wave and punk melodies. It's just that they also have a mischievous, almost destructive side, anxious to wreck those perfect melodies with feedback and screech and all manners of playful fuckery. "River of Longing" cleans the process up considerably. The vocals are right out there, in the front of the mix, and all that wonderful fuckery bides its time in the background, waiting for the right moment to erupt. The right moment being that gloriously cacophonous ending. Read More

Success, the sixth album by Winnipeg noise-rockers, KEN Mode, is not a happy album. Look at the cover. Dude is down as down can get, and that's cool. Not everyone can make lemonade out of lemons, as they say. Some prefer to wade in life's shit canal with a fifth of cheap liquor and a full pack of smokes. We won't judge KEN Mode for preferring the shit canal over a lemonade stand, especially not when their low end, post-hardcore rumble proves such an apt compliment for a man's litany of grievances. Read More

Perfect World is not my perfect world, it is not your perfect world, it is not anyone's perfect world save for some dead existentialist whose idea of a perfect world is only shared by freshman liberal arts majors who've had their mind totally blown by pot and a longhair adjunct in intro to philosophy. This thing is dark and dreadful. It's the audio equivalent of city juice, the putrid brown-yellow waste water of unknown origins seeping out of urban streets and stinking the skies. Yet, this world created Ben Greenberg (The Men) and Michael Berdan (Drunkdriver), out of mashed and mangled guitars, harsh effects and harsher vocals is wholly necessary in that cliched only pain can bring happiness kind of way. Read More

If the lead preview track, "If Death Ever Slept" by Destruction Unit is any indication of what's to come, there will be no radio-friendly unit-shifters on the band's forthcoming album, Negative Feedback Resistor (out September 18th on Sacred Bones). Instead, the most apt named band in underground rock, remains steadfast in their singular intent to destroy things. Read More

Grunge is not dead. If the recent Metz release didn't make it obvious to you that there's a still a market for gnarly guitar racket more than 20 years after Nirvana's demise, then the new single by Melbourne's Deaf Wish (also on Sub Pop Records) should do it. Read More

Latest Reviews

Let's talk about this Spacin' album, Total Freedom, 'cause to be honest, Total Freedom, and the previous Spacin' album, Deep Thuds, are pretty much the only things I've been listening to the past two weeks. Total Freedom shreds. It choogles. It's the work of jam masters. It's a jam monster. Read More